


What's Mine is Yours

by operacricket



Series: What's Mine is Yours [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Elf Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Pining, Willful Obliviousness, because they deserve immortality after this shit, blink and you miss it elf jaskier?, playing fast and loose with canon, sharing injuries au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22469407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/operacricket/pseuds/operacricket
Summary: Jaskier had always had a set of lungs to rival the North wind. By the time he was old enough to put words to his wailing, his poor mother’s head was grey and her heart torn by the babe who had never once stopped crying. There wasn’t a healer or witch she took him to who didn’t say the same thing: there was nothing to fix. They could treat a bruise, bandage the reflections of another’s injuries that sometimes echoed onto his skin, but there was no curing pain that wasn’t his.---Soulmates Share Injuries AU
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: What's Mine is Yours [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616605
Comments: 118
Kudos: 5284





	What's Mine is Yours

“Mm, and this one?” the girl asked, words interspersed with kisses that she trailed over Jaskier’s body.

“A--uh--” He pulled her back up to him, pressing a kiss to her lips to stop the inconvenient questions. Her hands were still tracing the scar. “Cut it on a rock,” he answered between kisses, weaving tales from nothing. Her lips moved along his jaw to his neck. “A child f-fell into the river and--ah!--nothing to do but jump after.”

He flipped them both, earning a delighted giggle, and pressed her into the mattress. Her hands were on his skin, grasping for something to hold onto, and he set about trying to better occupy her attention. 

“What about this one?” she asked breathlessly, fingers lingering on a scar on his collarbone. 

He nipped at her collarbone in return. “Don’t remember.”

There was a blessed moment that was just touch and lips and shivers, moans and gasping names, and then--

“Wait,” she said, putting a hand on his chest. 

He sat back, panting.

Her eyes held a familiar look of horror. “Are all these from your soulmate?”

Fuck. _Again?_

He slid onto the mattress beside her and swung his feet to the floor. Why did this always happen?

Before he could bow out gracefully, her hand on his hip stopped him. 

“Wait, I didn’t mean--”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Julian,” she breathed, sliding up behind him, her soft breasts pressing against his shoulder blades as she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. “That’s awful.”

“And yet, here we are.” He turned a bit to kiss the top of her head. “Madeline, dearest--”

“How did she get so hurt?”

Jaskier sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never met them. I’m not looking for them.” A big fat lie, but anything to comfort the girl now looking at him with tears in her eyes. “I’m moving on with my life.”

She smiled wetly and slipped back to pull him towards the pillows. “Well, then, let me help with that.”

Jaskier had always had a set of lungs to rival the North wind. By the time he was old enough to put words to his wailing, his poor mother’s head was grey and her heart torn by the babe who had never once stopped crying. There wasn’t a healer or witch she took him to who didn’t say the same thing: there was nothing to fix. They could treat a bruise, bandage the reflections of another’s injuries that sometimes echoed onto his skin, but there was no curing pain that wasn’t his. 

Jaskier loved his fancy clothes. 

They covered him wrists to ankles, concealing and soft against tender skin.

Still, no amount of fabric could change the life his soulmate lived or grimness of a connection deepening with age.

Damn inconvenient to have a soulmate’s bloody story written all across his skin when he was trying to distract himself by falling in and out of love across the continent. 

“I’ll pay you anything you want.” 

A dumb thing to say to a witch. Gods, he hated witches. 

Her eye glinted dangerously. “Coin will suffice. Or…”

Shit. And there it was. He was an idiot.

“Just a peek into the connection. You’re a rarity I’ve not yet seen.”

“What kind of peek?”

“Won’t hurt a bit.”

Which was not comforting.

She reached for his cheek without asking, and he felt the magic wash over him, sweeping him under.

As promised, it wasn’t painful. It was, however, deeply uncomfortable, like someone gently pushing thoughts aside and rummaging around in his brain. 

He saw a flash of white, golden eyes, and heard a low rumble like a growl. A wave of feelings crashed over him: annoyance, determination, loneliness, bravery... His head spun with it all, choked his thoughts and his lungs until he couldn’t move or even breathe--

And then it was over. She brushed a thumb along his cheekbone. 

He gasped for breath, eyes wild and demands on the tip of his tongue.

“Poor boy. Come back tomorrow. I’ll get you your charm.”

He tried to ask her what she’d seen, to press about his soulmate, but she was hurrying him out of the shop, his words ignored, and then he had a door in his face, and it wasn’t worth risking what he’d come here for.

What he’d felt burned in him, though.

He was a hopeless romantic, he’d always dreamed of finding his soulmate, but it had never felt this urgent. Even the next day when she gave him the charm, so simple, freeing him to live how he wanted, he burned.

When he slipped it around his neck and looked down at smooth, unblemished skin, the overwhelming emotions came pouring out of him in choking sobs. It didn’t make the scars go away, but it was enough to feel normal at least. 

His body was his own, for maybe the first time in his life, and he threw himself into living as fully as he could. And if it hid his ears in a world increasingly hostile to elves, well, that was his own business.He went far away from his people, from anyone who knew him. He made friends and lovers and enemies. 

He sought for the one who made his soul burn, but he didn’t let it limit him. He had more than enough love to keep him warm on the journey.

Sometimes he forgot that anything was wrong with him. He wouldn’t remember the pain until his hand ached around the neck of his lute or the questing fingers of a partner dug a little too hard into a blooming, invisible bruise. Sometimes, he would reach for his things with a joint that was swollen from being shoved back into place, and he would remember. But there was too much he wanted to do, to many people to gift his heart to. 

Love and pain were two sides of the same coin, and oh, how he loved.

Geralt rarely saw himself in mirrors. Streams or windows, maybe, the gleaming edge of his sword, but not clearly, not a detailed reflection. 

Which was why when he saw himself in a bath house with livid purple love bites up his neck, marks that were very definitely not his own, he had no idea how long they’d been there or how many times they might have been there before. 

Something painful twisted in his chest, dousing his mood with deep displeasure. 

He had a soulmate.

A soulmate who was currently in the arms of someone else. 

He wasn’t sure which part of that he hated more. 

The man sitting cloaked in shadows kept catching Jaskier’s eye while he sang, beautiful and gloomy, with big powerful hands. He exuded danger and adventure, and it drove a thrill up Jaskier’s spine. He waited only long enough to finish his song and collect his “earnings” before making his way over. 

“I love the way you just sit in the corner and brood.”

The man said something dismissive, but Jaskier didn’t hear it, too caught on the sight of a familiar scar along his jaw. His own mouth kept moving without him while his whole focus was taken by cataloging marks on the man’s skin that he knew, literally, like the back of his hand. “Oh, fun. White hair… big, old loner, two very… very scary-looking swords...”

Of fucking course. 

It would be a Witcher. 

It would be _the_ Witcher. “Geralt of Rivia.”

Oh, and wasn’t that a sour face. 

Jaskier practically climbed over the table in his elation to have finally found him. He bounced and poured out words and followed to hunt a demon, hoping to show him that some monsters and a few harsh glares didn’t scare him. It was time for him to get to live the adventures himself. Geralt’s danger was his danger, his life was the Witcher’s life.

It was all very poetic.

For a man who didn’t say much, he did not mince words telling Jaskier to get lost. He didn’t want company, blah blah blah, solitary path too dangerous for bards, etc. etc. Jaskier smiled and wrote a song about it and knew that, even with the irritation clear in Geralt’s eyes, there was no place in the world safer for him than at his side. 

His soulmate was a Witcher, and that meant he was in for a very, very long life of pain. Nothing to be done about that, and he’d made his peace with it. It was the way life was and always had been, and he was going to enjoy the hell out of all the time he got.

Neither of them were sensitive enough to pain for the simple roughing up Filavandrel did (or for the punch Geralt himself landed to Jaskier’s gut--which was very hurtful, but not comparatively painful) to pass through the bond in any noticeable way, even with Jaskier’s wishful thinking trying to convince him that he felt every brush.

It was frustrating and exhilarating.

He wrote a song about it. And then another. He had a feeling that he could follow Geralt to the ends of the earth and not run out of words to sing him. 

It barely took a few drowners, much less a selkimore to confirm to him that yes, the man dripping blood and guts on the tavern floor was his one and only.

It took even less time for Jaskier to fall madly, head over heels in love with him. 

Not that he planned to say that. 

Geralt was allergic to feelings. He had plenty of them, no matter what people said about Witchers, but trying to make him talk about them was like pulling teeth. More of an actions man. Which was fine. Jaskier didn’t plan to go anywhere anytime soon. He could prove his worth. He would eventually need to tell him, of course. It wasn’t the sort of thing one kept secret from one's soulmate, but he could show him by doing instead of saying. 

“Now… let’s not do anything hasty…” Jaskier said, hands out to hold off the townsfolk. It had just been a bit of banter, a few distractions in the back hall while waiting for Geralt to look for work. 

And now they were coming at him with those deathly serious looks on their faces, and he’d run out of space to back away. 

A throat cleared. 

The gathered men turned to look and then took several quick steps away from the Witcher. 

“Jaskier?” he said with an exasperated raising of his eyebrows.

“A simple misunderstanding,” Jaskier answered, slipping between the men to Geralt’s side. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”

He followed the Witcher out to where Roach was waiting, noting the scowl. 

“I really don’t understand why they were so up in arms,” he complained. “I didn’t do anything. I mean, not really. I mean, not much. Did you find us a job?”

“I found _a_ job,” Geralt answered. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

“Well, I can’t stay here!” Jaskier gestured wildly back at the tavern. 

“Yeah, I got that. You’ll stay with Roach. Roach runs, you run, got it?”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” Jaskier answered, waving his hand in a disinterested way. “Stay with the horse like luggage. Keep away from the things that want to kill me, no worries. So what are we hunting?” 

“ _We_ aren’t hunting.”

Jaskier hummed. He was already thinking of brave and adventurous melodies to sing of their deeds. 

A clutch of wyverns, just hatched and fiercely protected by an angry mother would need some tweaking to make a good ballad. Killing babies wasn’t a crowd pleaser, no matter how many farmers’ livelihoods those babies were eating. 

He thought about this all on the walk, to himself and out loud. When Geralt ordered him quiet and went on ahead, he stayed back as requested. 

Mostly.

Sort of.

He might have moved a little closer than Roach.

Well, a lot closer than Roach, who was snorting and stamping the ground. But he could still see the horse, so he wasn’t actually leaving her side. 

He crouched on the rocky rise and stared down into the crags where Geralt tussled with a giant, scaled beast. 

It was big as a horse and hissing angrily, but he didn’t see what the fuss was. Geralt clearly had it handled.

He watched a few easy parries and rested his chin on his hand. Always a pleasure to watch Geralt fight.

The scaled head rising from a broken furrow in the ground behind them sucked any enjoyment of the experience out of him like water on a parched tongue. It was a head roughly the same size as the wyvern Geralt was fighting, which must make that one of the babies. Oh, good god. 

Surely the Witcher had heard it. 

He had to know it was there.

And yet, he wasn’t turning, was still locked up with the hatchling, and when his sword did go through the small one’s throat, the unmistakable fury in the mother wyvern’s eyes took Jaskier’s breath away.

Not away enough to stop him shouting out, “Geralt! Behind you!”

Geralt whipped around as the wyvern launched herself forward.

Jaskier could do nothing but watch, heart in his throat, and brace for the worst. He wasn’t sure if watching Geralt fight like this was better or worse than sitting in a tavern and guessing at the things he was feeling. 

At least here he knew, he could see it coming, like now when her tail hit Geralt in the middle and Jaskier’s breath fled his lungs. 

But at least in their room at the inn, baby wyverns didn’t sneak up on him and scare him shitless when they screamed almost in his ear.

“Oh my god!” 

There were two of them, circling him like their next meal, and he probably should have stayed with the horse.

“Nice babies…” he said shakily. “It’s just your good friend Jaskier. You wouldn’t want to eat me; you'll ruin your appetite.”

The nearest one shrieked again, and Jaskier threw himself to the side just before it pounced towards him. He crashed and rolled, managing to fall over the rise where he’d been watching and tumble down a short slope. 

Away from the babies. Good.

Towards the mother. Bad. 

He coughed to fill his lungs, getting a mouthful of dirt when two boots kicked up dust next to him. He looked up in a daze and saw Geralt standing over him holding the mother wyvern off with his sword between her teeth.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Jaskier coughed. “Pleasant weather we’re having.”

Geralt gave the wyvern a shove, buying them a little space, and shot a withering, black-eyed look over his shoulder. “ _Go._ ”

“Love to, but there’s two over…” He trailed off, because the babies were climbing over the rocks, hemming them in. 

Geralt cursed and turned back to the fight with renewed force. 

He was practically on top of Jaskier, the fighting on all sides. 

The babies stayed back, snapping occasionally, but the mother was livid and vicious. Geralt parried with her, clearly eager to end this quickly. He struck a blow, one that Jaskier was sure should be enough, but she was still up, rearing back and shaking her head to clear blood from her eyes. 

The pups surged forward to come to their mother’s aid, and Geralt had to lunge for them, sword coming in one impressive sweep to take both of their heads from their necks. 

The wail of the mother broke Jaskier’s heart even as she slammed down on top of him and broke his ribs. A horrible, wheezing cry burst from his lips, and then the mother collapsed away from him, dead.

Shit. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs were on fire. 

“I fucking told you to stay with Roach,” Geralt growled, breathless, as he shoved the corpse aside and dragged Jaskier to his feet. 

“I did!” he protested. “They snuck--” he gasped, words leaving him dizzy and leaning desperately on the Witcher.

Who was apparently too angry for a grunt or a growl or a hmm. He hauled Jaskier mercilessly up the hill and back to Roach, plopping him down on a rock next to her and crouching to check him over thoroughly. Jaskier’s chest hurt too badly to do anything but take aborted little breaths, yelping when Geralt pressed on his ribs. He mouthed soundless curses--this was so much more painful firsthand.

They sat in silence while Geralt tugged Jaskier’s shirt off--a perfect opportunity for an innuendo, wasted!--and brought a long roll of bandages from the saddlebags. 

Jaskier could see him favoring his own ribs and tensed.

Was this was it?

This was by far the worst Jaskier had been injured in the Witcher’s presence. This would be it. He was going to push too hard on a rib, feel it, and realize. 

“Breathe normally,” Geralt ordered. 

“Easy for you to say.” Still, he fought against the panic and pain and drew a full breath before whining it back out. 

Geralt grunted and winced while he bandaged up Jaskier’s ribs, got them supported. He watched him work, searching his face for a realization, for recognition. He opened his mouth to say… something. And shut it again.

“You were supposed to stay with Roach,” Geralt repeated, this time sounding more frustrated than angry.

“I’m sorry.”

Geralt stood up straight, moving stiffly. Jaskier watched him, confused and worried. He’d gotten his own tossing around, hit in the ribs himself, but surely he could tell the difference. Surely he knew what broken ribs felt like, even faded by the bond. 

“Geralt--” He was still working out how to make him see, how to get him to fucking acknowledge what was stretching between them, when he realized what an abysmally, monumentally stupid idea that was. 

Geralt “Fuck Destiny” of Rivia, Sir Throws Himself In The Line of Danger For A Stranger He’s Just Met, the one and only “last thing I want is someone needing me,” would not be excited to find out he had a soulmate. He would not be happy. There would be no smile on his face if Jaskier took off his charm and revealed that patchwork of scars that Geralt’s Path had left on him, no matter how delighted Jaskier was to be at his side. 

It wouldn’t matter if Jaskier was over the moon, if he’d finally almost gotten Geralt to admit they were friends. Geralt would blame himself and then promptly disappear, and Jaskier would never see him again.

Geralt had turned away from packing up the saddlebags and frowned, still waiting for him to speak.

“Thank you for saving me,” he said instead. Someday, he would have to say something.

It wasn’t the sort of thing he could keep to himself--he really, really shouldn’t--but for now at least, it was where they were.

“What’s that for?” Geralt asked, one night when the monster had gone down quickly, and he’d had enough ale to ask questions with multiple syllables.

Jaskier halted his diatribe about “local” brews and what they were good for, his hand jumping to the amulet around his neck. “This?”

Geralt nodded. 

He thought briefly about answering honestly. Geralt rarely asked personal questions and he hated to not reward good behavior. His answer ended up somewhere to the left of truth. “Just a charm to smooth over a few blemishes and flaws. Looking as perfect as I do while on the road isn’t easy.”

“Hmm.”

He wasn’t sure if he should be offended by how easily Geralt seemed to accept the idea that Jaskier had purchased and constantly wore a magical amulet out of vanity, but it was fine. 

“You mean you choose to look like this?” he asked flatly, and Jaskier could see the glint of a teasing smile in his eyes.

He gasped, pressing a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “I am gorgeous with or without this charm! I’ll have you know that this face,” he waved his hand in a circle around his features, “Is one hundred percent mine. All natural. Not a thing I would change about it.” Perhaps protesting too much. “I just… may have made a few poor choices in my youth regarding young love and some rather permanent markings, and it is remarkably difficult to woo a girl with another’s name on your chest.”

Geralt rolled his eyes at Jaskier’s antics. He didn’t give any indication of whether he could tell it was all bullshit but seemed content enough to leave it, so Jaskier counted it as a win. 

The only reason, Jaskier knew, that Geralt had never realized what he was hiding (or even that he was hiding anything) was that sometimes, about some things, he was an utter moron. 

All those Witcher-y senses and still about as observant as a brick when it came to things that didn’t have teeth or claws. Sure, he frowned at Jaskier sometimes when he favored a phantom injury or winced a little too much for sympathy at Geralt’s injuries, but he apparently didn’t connect the dots. He didn’t keep himself any safer or stop pointlessly shoving Jaskier behind him whenever danger threatened. 

It had to be some special kind of blindness or denial, because if the injuries weren’t enough to catch him up to speed, the heartsick pining surely ought to be.

It took Yennifer--fucking Yennifer!--half a glance, mid-way through a power-hungry scheme to get possessed by a djinn, to notice Jaskier’s feelings. It almost made him wish (just a little, just a bit) that djinn magic wasn’t so specific, so targeted that it didn’t pass through the bond, because at least if he and Geralt had both died choking on their own blood, they would never have met the witch. 

_Gods_ , he hated witches.

The spine had gone straight through his shoulder before snapping off the beast, leaving Geralt to finish it off one-handed and drag himself back into town, blood and gore dripping off of him in a disgusting trail.

Jaskier was already panicking before he’d even stepped into the inn, he could smell the built up stress the second he walked in, worry that smelled sharp, like pain. It wasn't a new smell for Jaskier, but that didn't make it less unpleasant.

“Geralt!” He was on him immediately, tugging him around and, eyes glued on the spine, upstairs towards a bath. “You should have let me come with you. I told you, idiot! I should have gone.”

Geralt grunted at him, not bothering to ask what exactly the bard thought it would have helped to have him along. Jaskier needed to talk the panic out, not hear Geralt’s explain that he always ended up hurt worse somehow when the bard was in a fight. Focusing on keeping monsters away from him took its toll, it seemed.

But that wasn’t the point of the rambling. The still ongoing lamenting of Geralt’s injuries and his walk back alone was for Jaskier.

At least he’d done something useful with his fretting, it seemed, because when they reached the room, a bath had already been drawn. It steamed invitingly in the corner.

Just one thing to deal with first.

“Is it poisoned?” Jaskier was asking, one hand tight to his stomach like he was feeling sick and the other hovering warily near the spine. “Do I need to get a healer? Do you need a potion? Do you--”

Geralt cut him off with his good hand in his face. “Enough. I need to take it out and, when I do, I need you to stop the bleeding. Got it?”

Jaskier nodded, eyes wide. 

Geralt lowered himself to sit on the edge of the heavy metal tub and Jaskier came around to his injured side, bandages already in hand. 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to--” 

Geralt didn’t wait to see what he was going to offer, just gripped the spine and yanked it out in a spray that was already darkening the water behind him. Jaskier hissed sympathetically and jammed the bandages against the seeping wound, back and front. His left hand was shaking, not putting any real pressure on the front of Geralt’s body, and when Geralt reached up with his right, taking over, he sighed with relief, switching just to holding the back. He looked pale, swaying a little.

“Do not throw up on me,” Geralt growled. 

“Nope,” he said through pursed lips. “Won’t. Why would I do that? It’s not like there’s blood or monster entrails or a hole clean through your shoulder.”

“Jaskier.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“I just need to clean up now. It’s over.”

“Mm-hmm.” He nodded, still looking queasy. 

Geralt would never admit that the extra help getting out of his armor and into the bath was a blessing or that getting stitches, even with his dominant hand, into his own shoulder and wrapped would have been a grim process. He would never tell the bard this, but Jaskier's fretting and gagging as he stitched Geralt up, chattering endlessly as he wrapped bandages over the top of the neat work, was as soothing as the warm water washing the gore from his skin. 

Jaskier’s lute stayed in its case for several days after the whole “spine” thing, his shoulder aching too much to hold it or strum. If Geralt though anything about it, he said nothing.

And then the mountain happened. 

Jaskier had hurt more than most men, for all his life. Geralt had caused him so much pain over the years, gotten him stabbed and poisoned and bitten and shot.

This hurt worse than all of it.

“Right. Uh, right then. I’ll go get the rest of the story from the others.”

He was in a daze when he turned and started walking, bypassing the camp without particularly noticing or caring. Just walking.

What was he supposed to do, then?

Pretend he’d never met the man?

Move on with someone and wait for the day he felt Geralt die? Hope for enough life after that to live a century or two without the reminder of what he’d lost showing up every time a hunt went wrong?

The trees thickened around him, darkening the sky to match his mood.

His head and feet were aching along with his heart by the time he shook himself out of his melodrama and decided to go back and give Geralt a piece of his mind. Fuck dignity. If this was going to be it, he was going to say all the things he’d ever wanted to shout at the man first. 

Except he spun on his heel and realized he didn’t know which way “back” was. It was dark, and he was somewhere deep in the woods.

“Fuck.”

Idiot.

He managed a fire. Due to his hasty departure--no bag, no supplies--that would be the only comfort for the night. It was him, his flimsy shoes, and his lute.

Propped against a tree, sure he wasn’t going to sleep without a bedroll or a meal or a Witcher, he plucked listlessly at his lute, melancholy working its way out through his fingertips.

He wasn’t hanging onto the words he sang, wasn’t thinking about them much at all, just stewing in the frustration and grief and loneliness, and he drifted, not really sleeping but not really singing, with his lute and his fire and the darkness around him. 

Oh god, he was going to die.

Would Geralt feel it if he died? 

He could hear noises in the bushes, circling around him, and he had nothing but a lute and a pitiful fire to protect himself. 

What kind of monster would it be? Manticore? Griffin?

Was it just wolves? (Not that he'd be any less dead.)

When a man stepped into the fire light, a sword at his waist and a grim smile on his face, Jaskier wished for wolves.

"Looks like the Witcher needs to be keeping a tighter rein on his pets."

"Our luck, I guess," another voice came from behind him, startling. 

He scrambled to his feet.

“Your Witcher stole a dragon from us,” the first said.

For some reason, the words that choked out of Jaskier’s mouth were, “Not my Witcher.”

A laugh from the trees. Another appeared, two more behind him. “I’ve seen you trailing him, pup.”

“Well,” his voice went a little high as he looked in a circle and tried to keep them all in sight. “Do you see him here now? He sent me away.”

The leader snorted. “I saw him on that mountain when you managed to find a monster. I’d say you’re about the only thing worth taking away from him at this point.”

Jaskier wanted to protest, but they were circling closer. 

He squared his feet. 

It was a pitifully short fight. 

They got to him before he could get to the dagger Geralt had given him--as if it would have done him any good. One of them yanked his hands around to tie behind his back while another landed a punch to his jaw that reminded him how much sharper his own pain was than Geralt’s.

They shoved him forward, hard enough that he stumbled. Hands tied, off balance, he would have fallen on his face if another hadn’t caught him. A knee came up between his legs, and he saw stars. 

“That one’s for your Witcher, boy,” someone jeered. 

Gasping and crumpled in on himself, he wanted to cry at the irony. They really couldn’t have found a better proxy for their anger. 

He received another shove while still bent over and this one did take him to the ground. He skidded, tasting dirt, and must have hit his head. He must have, because when he opened his eyes and looked up towards the men, he met a pair of golden eyes in the shadows of the trees.

“Ger--?” his question was cut off by a boot buried in his stomach. 

He moaned breathlessly and the two men nearest him lost their heads in the swing of the Witcher’s sword. 

All hell broke loose. 

There were more of them than Jaskier had even guessed, and they were all bearing down on Geralt. He gasped out a warning, but the Witcher didn’t need it. He spun on them, deadly and furious and as gorgeous as Jaskier had ever seen him. 

It occurred to him that lying on the ground was a good way to get trampled in the brawl, and he rolled to his knees to make a break for the treeline. 

He didn’t make it to his feet. 

A pair of battle rough hands with unfamiliar scars grabbed him, hauled him back, and then there was a knife at his throat.

His breath shook loudly in the sudden silence. 

Geralt was in front of him, sword at his side and eyes fixed on Jaskier’s throat. A dozen bodies littered the clearing, the only breathing one pressed flush against his back. 

“Drop the sword,” the leader ordered, pulling the knife tight to his skin. 

Jaskier hissed and pressed his eyes closed. 

“I said drop it!”

He heard the sound of metal hitting the dirt and opened his eyes to see Geralt with his hands to the sides, empty. He stepped towards them, and the tightening of the man’s grip on Jaskier’s throat made it clear that he knew Geralt was just as dangerous with his hands. 

“Get on the ground.”

Jaskier shook his head a fraction, trying to tell him to just go. Even now, even as angry as he was, he didn’t want to see Geralt get hurt. 

Not even for selfish reasons.

He couldn't bear to see a dimming light in those glowing eyes. He couldn't watch Geralt lose even one drop of blood for him just because he'd been stupid.

He loved the man.

The love in him filled his heart and soul, and every bit of it, every bit of him, was Geralt's. 

Still, he wasn’t even surprised when Geralt went down, one knee and then the other into the dirt in front of him. His eyes were on Jaskier, on the knife, and Jaskier opened his mouth and closed it. 

He couldn’t let this happen. 

_Ready?_ He mouthed.

Geralt frowned, eyes narrowing a bit. 

The leader of the dead men was speaking, but neither of them were listening. 

_Three_ , Jaskier mouthed.

Geralt shook his head just a little. Well, tough.

 _Two_.

He saw Geralt’s hands twitch.

 _One_.

Here goes nothing.

He ducked and twisted in the man’s grip, a move perfected in a dozen bar fight choke-holds--one that Geralt had called reckless and likely to get his throat slit--and got the back of his neck rather than the delicate skin of his throat to the knife. The man’s hand was wrenched away before he could lay steel even there, and Jaskier was wrenched from his grip and pushed to safety none too gently.

The feeling of a knife sinking into his shoulder, just to the right of his collarbone took him to his knees again, breath going out. He spun back around to see Geralt yank the knife from himself and bury it in its owner’s eyesocket. 

They waited, frozen in the moment, until the dying man’s last breath wheezed out.

The terror that had gripped him when Jaskier had started counting down receded as the last of the men fell. His heart was pounding uncomfortably fast for a Witcher, faster than it had since the wyvern. When he turned back and saw Jaskier on the ground, when he smelled pain and blood on him, his mind went white. 

He was to his side in an instant, hauling him up and slitting the ropes on his hands with Jaskier’s own undrawn dagger. Blood. There was blood and this time there was no tricking himself into thinking it was the monster’s or Geralt’s own. 

“Where are you hurt?” he demanded, shoving at the bard’s clothes and hunting for the wound. Nothing, just torn clothes and dirt.

When he realized why he couldn’t see anything, he reached for the charm. Damn the thing. He needed to see.

Jaskier swatted his hand away, tugging his clothes back into place. His focus seemed determinedly on Geralt’s shoulder.

“Geralt, he stabbed you!”

He grunted and ignored it, too busy looking for the source of the pain he could smell on the bard. His instincts sung with the need to protect, to fix. He’d done nothing but fuck up all day, and he’d fucked this up too somehow. He’d thought he’d been fast enough, gotten the knife away before it could cut Jaskier, before it could imprint the day’s mistakes permanently on the bard’s skin, and he’d failed. 

On the second attempt, he got the amulet off him, tossing it away when Jaskier grabbed for it with a curse, his eyes searching Jaskier’s skin in the darkness. No blood was immediately visible, just a dark bruise coming in on his jaw and a smattering of silvery scars. 

“Geralt, stop.” Jaskier caught his hands when he reached for him again. “I’m not hurt.”

Geralt growled. Why was he being stubborn? “I can smell it. Where?”

Jaskier laughed in surprise and shook his head disbelievingly. “Now he notices?” he said dramatically to an audience that wasn’t listening. “ _Now?_ That’s just… That’s fucking great.” He dragged in a strained breath, laughed again, and dropped Geralt’s wrists to rub a hand over his face. “I’m not hurt, Geralt. You are.”

Geralt just frowned as Jaskier reached for the collar of his tunic, pulling it aside to show the angry stripe of skin, gently weeping like a shallow scrape. A gash in exact mirror of where the dagger had been driven into Geralt’s chest. It hadn’t bled enough to stain his shirt, just an echo, but it looked raw and painful.

Jaskier huffed another chuckle, this one too bitter for him, making Geralt’s hackles raise, and released the fabric to let it cover the wound. 

“Don’t worry. You’ve made it quite clear how you feel about Destiny and even clearer how you feel about me. I’m not expecting anything from you.” The look on his face was unacceptably grim for the normally cheerful bard. “I just wanted to know what you were like. Go on a few adventures before being a Witcher’s soulmate killed me.”

The words hit their mark, launching Geralt back away from him like he’d been struck. 

He’d known something was wrong with Jaskier, known there was more to his insistence in following along. He’d noticed him looking, but he’d thought is was just harmless attraction, lust in the way Jaskier trailed after anything he thought was beautiful (that was, most of the world). He’d seen sadness and pain in his eyes, but hadn’t known how to ask what had caused it.

His mind was tumbling over all the signs, but he just managed, “How long have you known?”

“For certain? Just after Filavandrel, probably. But I guessed when I met you,” he said flatly, too flat for Geralt’s liking. 

“And you didn’t fucking say anything?”

“Oh yes, _Hello good Witcher, sir, can I interest you in a Destiny? No? Perhaps some guilt with a side of second-guessing yourself to really spice things up._ ” Jaskier threw up his hands. “What do you want from me, Geralt? You send me away, you track me down. You complain about destiny, you complain about my not saying anything. I don’t know what would make you happy.”

 _You,_ he thought helplessly. He grabbed him and hauled him close, anything to stop the venomous words, crushing their lips together. He needed his arms around him. 

“Mmph--!” Jaskier exclaimed. “I’m angry at you,” he whined when Geralt broke the kiss to bury his face in the bard’s neck. 

“I’m sorry.”

Jaskier froze in his arms.

“I didn’t mean any of it. I was angry and stupid, and I’m sorry.”

After a moment of silence, Jaskier slumped against him, sniffing. His voice wobbled when he snarked, “Wow, was that painful for you? Because I think I felt it.”

Geralt growled at him, holding on until the stickiness of blood and the twinging in his shoulder dictated they start moving again.

He moved Jaskier back to the campfire and Roach, who'd caught up from where he’d left her in the last dash to reach Jaskier--the moment when he went from trying to find a bard to talk him out of his sulk to trying to outrace the danger (the moment, he knew now, that Jaskier’s pain had reached him and sharpened his frustration into fear). 

“Here,” Jaskier sighed, pushing him down into the spot where, from the lute, he’d been sitting by the fire. He stepped over to Roach and found the supplies easily enough, returning with some bandages and a needle. “Off,” he said, tugging at the armor, and Geralt obliged, settling into the habit that had formed between them. 

He cleaned the wound and threaded the needle, barely wincing as he began stitching, though he had to have felt it.

Everything was unusually quiet, Geralt watching him focus on his work. His eyes traced the unglamored line of him. He was right--the magic hadn’t changed him much. Just a few scars, and--

“Anything else I need to know?” Geralt asked.

“Um, no?” he squeaked. “Everything I am is what you see in front of you.”

He reached over and flicked Jaskier’s ear. 

“Ow, hey!” Jaskier got his point, though. “To be fair, you never asked.”

There was a lot he hadn’t asked, and he was regretting that now. 

Jaskier pulled the last stitch tight and, suddenly emboldened by the night’s events, pressed a kiss just beside his work. He patted Geralt’s shoulder and handed him the bandages to finish up himself before stepping away to shuffle through the leaves. It was a hard search for his charm in the dim light of the dying fire, but it hadn’t gone far. The hunt only took a few minutes. 

When he grabbed it with a triumphant sound and turned around, Geralt was there, putting a hand on his arm. Not restraining, just halting. 

“Don’t.”

His lips quirked in a sad smile. “I really think I should.”

“Let me see.” 

“Geralt…”

Geralt pulled him back towards the fire and tugged at the hem of his shirt. 

“Can’t wait to get my clothes off, Witcher?” 

Geralt’s face remained deathly serious, eyes fixed on the skin he could see.

Jaskier sighed. “If this is you trying to be a martyr, I won’t have it. No torturing yourself for things you couldn’t help.”

“Show me,” he said again. What broke Jaskier’s nerve, though, was the barely whispered, “Please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Jaskier choked out. His hands shook, just a little, as he shucked the doublet and pulled the soft fabric of his shirt up and over his head. 

Geralt stood frozen across from him. 

It had been years since a lover--or anyone, really--had seen him without a shirt or the amulet. He had not missed that look.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he blurted out, because it looked very bad. His earlier words flashed back into his mind-- _”before being a Witcher’s soulmate killed me”_ \--and he cursed his damn poetic, dramatic turns of phrase. Because that’s what he saw reflected back in Geralt’s eyes. Death by a thousand cuts. “Geralt, listen to me,” he said, surging forward and catching him before he could bolt. “This is not your fault. This is your good friend Destiny’s fault. You didn’t choose this any more than I did. You had no way to know.”

“I knew I had a soulmate,” he said, voice cracking.

“How?” Jaskier asked flatly. “How could you possibly tell mine from yours? Did the lute strings hurt your fingertips?”

Geralt reached up and thumbed over the soft skin of his neck. “You were no stranger to… bruises.”

He flushed. “Ah. Yes. Well.”

“I knew I had a soulmate, and I--”

“You what?” Jaskier asked softly, reaching to brush his hair back with one hand. “You didn’t lock yourself away? Give up Witcher-ing? Become a farmer?” He sighed and took Geralt’s hand, guiding it up to his shoulder, which had stopped bleeding all on its own. “Look. That’s a stab wound. Barely there.”

Geralt made a wounded noise.

“No, listen, it’s just a scratch. Do you understand?” He didn’t flinch when Geralt brushed his fingers across the skin surrounding it. It hurt, but not so badly he couldn’t control himself. “Some of us don’t have mutant healing, so yes, there’s a lot of scars.” He watched Geralt’s eyes track over just how many scars. “But that’s just the burden that comes from having as fair and delicate skin as I.”

The joke fell flat. He wasn’t sure how to get that guilt-ridden look off Geralt’s face.

“Don't you think it makes me look rugged?”

“I need better armor.”

Jaskier smiled at him softly. “You worry too much.”

Geralt made him sit and let his shoulder be tended, no matter how much he protested. Broken skin could get infected, no matter how much less serious the echo might be. 

Standing behind him at the fireside, his thumb traced over the knobs of Jaskier’s spine and down to a set of claw marks that he barely remembered. He leaned down almost without thinking and pressed a kiss to the raised scars. 

Jaskier shivered, back arching just a little at the touch. 

It was the encouragement he needed. With hands and lips, he explored his own story written on Jaskier’s body. Each silvery scar received its own attention until Jaskier was breathing heavily and Geralt moved around to the front.

His eyes were blown wide, fixed on Geralt as he began the process again across his chest and down…

He’d reached an arrow wound in the V of muscles just before Jaskier’s hips, when Jaskier broke the silence. 

“Now, now, let’s not make any promises you’re not going to keep.” His voice was cracked and breathless. Geralt could smell his arousal thick and twining with his own. 

In answer, he reached for the tie of Jaskier’s breeches, glancing up at him briefly for permission.

The bard was staring down at him with wonder and adoration that he’d have been blind not to see. “I mean, yes. Yes, go right on ahead,” he squeaked.

Geralt didn’t need to be told twice.

They took their time that night, learning each other and claiming each other in a way neither had every expected to be possible.

Jaskier had always had a set of lungs to rival the North wind, and Geralt took a particular sense of pride in bringing him beyond putting words to the blissful cries. 

In the morning, neither of them was sure whose marks were whose.

**Author's Note:**

> And there it is! Of course it would be these two that make me finally post something. 
> 
> There might be a few more vignettes in this AU because it's just such a playground for angst, so subscribe to the series, if you want to be notified for those.
> 
> This one just needed to be posted already because I was working it to death, but I'm looking for a beta/mutual beta, so if you're interested, message me here or on tumblr @ operacricket.tumblr.com


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